by Wilbur Smith
He left the apartment building on foot and set off down Tunhua Road. He loved the Renao of Taipei. It was one of the things that he missed most while he was away. Renao was a concept that was almost impossible to translate from the Chinese to any other language. It meant festive, lively, joyous and noisy all at the same time.
It was now the ghost month, the seventh lunar month when the ghosts return from hell to haunt the earth and have to be placated with gifts of ghost money and food. It was also necessary to keep them at a distance with fireworks and dragon processions.
Cheng paused to laugh and applaud one of the processions led by a monstrous dragon with a huge papier-michi head and fifty pairs of human legs beneath its serpentine body. The jumping-jack fireworks popped with spurts of blue smoke about the ankles of the spectators and the band beat drums and gongs and the children shrieked. It was good renao and it heightened Cheng’s excitement.
He threaded his way through the crowds and the bustle until he reached the East Garden area of the city and left the main thoroughfare to enter a back, alley.
The fortune-teller was one Cheng, had used for ten years. He was an old man with thin wispy grey hair and a facial mole like Cheng’s father had. He wore traditional robes and a mandarin cap and sat cross-legged in his curtained cubicle with his paraphernalia around him.
Cheng greeted him respectfully and at his invitation squatted facing him.
“I have not seen you for a long time,” the old man accused him, and Cheng apologised. “I have been away from Taiwan.”
They discussed the fee and the divination that Cheng required. “I am about to undertake a task,” Cheng explained. “I wish to have spirit guidance.” The old man nodded and consulted his almanacs and star guides, nodding and mumbling to himself. Finally he handed Cheng a ceramic cup filled with bamboo rods.
Cheng shook this vigorously and then spilled the rods on to the mat between them. Each rod was painted with characters and emblems and the old man studied the pattern in which they had fallen. “This task will not be undertaken here in Taiwan, but in a land across the ocean,” he said, and Cheng relaxed a little. The old man had not lost his touch.
He nodded encouragement.
“It is a task of great complexity and there are many people involved. Foreigners, foreign devils.”
Again Cheng nodded.
“I see powerful allies, but also powerful enemies who will oppose you.”
“I know my allies, but I do not know who will be my enemies,” Cheng interjected.
“You already know your enemy. He has opposed you before. On that occasion you overcame him.”
“Can you describe him?”
The fortune-teller shook his head. “You will know him when you see him again.”
“When will that be?”
“You should not travel during the ghost month. You must prepare yourself here in Taiwan. Leave only on the first day of the eighth lunar month.
“Very well.” That suited Cheng’s plans. “Will I overcome this enemy once again?”
To answer that question it will be necessary to make a further divination, the old man whispered, and Cheng grimaced at this device for doubling the fee.
“Very well” he agreed, and the fortune-teller replaced the bamboo sticks in the bowl and Cheng shook them out on to the mat.
“There are two enemies now.” The fortune-teller picked two rods out of the pile. “One is the man that you know, the other is a woman whom you have not yet met. Together they will oppose your endeavours.”
“Will I overcome them?” Cheng asked anxiously, and the old man examined the fall of the bamboo rods minutely.
“I see a snow-capped mountain and a great forest. These will be the battleground. There will be evil spirits and demons…” The old man’s voice trailed away, and he lifted one of the bamboo sticks from the pile.
“What else do you see?” Cheng insisted, but the old man coughed and spat and would not look up at him. The bamboo sliver was painted white, the colour of death and disaster. That is all. I can see no more, he mumbled.
Cheng took a new thousand Taiwan dollar note from his top pocket and laid it beside the pile of bamboo rods. “Will I overcome my enemies?” Cheng asked, and the note disappeared like a conjuring trick under the old man’s bony fingers.
“You will have great face, he promised,” but still he would not look directly at his client, and Cheng left the cubicle with some of his good feelings dissipated by the ambiguous reply. More than ever now he needed solace, but it was still only a little after eight o’clock. She had told him not to come before ten.
It was only a short walk to Snake Alley, but on his way Cheng paused in the forecourt of the Dragon Mountain Temple and burned a pile of ghost money in one of the gaudy pyramid furnaces to placate the ancestral ghosts who would be prowling the night around him.
He left the temple and cut through the night market where the stall-holders offered a bewildering array of wares and the prostitutes plied their trade in flimsy wooden sheds in the back areas of the market. Both storekeepers and painted ladies haggled loudly with their potential customers, and the spectators joined in with comment and suggestion and laughter. It was good renao, and Cheng’s spirits revived.
He entered -Snake Alley down which the shops were crowded closely together. Outside each stall were piled snake baskets of steel mesh and the front windows were filled with the largest and most spectacularly coloured of the serpents which gave the alley its name.
Many of the shops had a live mongoose tethered outside the front door. Cheng stopped to watch an arranged contest between one of these sleek little predators and a four-foot cobra.
The cobra reared up as it confronted the mongoose, and the crowd gathered quickly and shrieked with delight. With its striped hood fully extended, the cobra revolved and swayed like a flower on its stalk to watch the circling mongoose with unblinking bright eyes while its feathery black tongue tasted the scent of its adversary on the air.
The mongoose danced in and then leapt back as the cobra struck. For an instant the snake was off balance and fully extended and the mongoose darted in for the kill. It seized the back of the glistening scaled head and its needle teeth crunched into bone. The snake’s body whipped and coiled in its death throes and the proprietor of the shop separated the mongoose from its victim and carried the writhing reptile into his shop, followed by two or three eager male customers.
Cheng did not join them. He had his own special shop, and he wanted a particular type of snake, the rarest, the most expensive, the most effective.
The snake-doctor recognized Cheng over the heads of the crowd that thronged the alley. His shop was famous. He did not have to stage mongoose fights to attract his customers. He beamed and bowed, and ushered Cheng through to the back room which was curtained off from the public gaze.
It was not necessary for Cheng to state his requirements. The shop owner knew him well, over many years. it was Cheng who had arranged his supply of the most virulently poisonous reptiles from Africa. It was Cheng who had introduced him to Chetti Singh, and made the first consignments of snakes through the diplomatic bag. Of course, Cheng; took a commission on each shipment.
Cheng had also persuaded him to deal in rare African birds. Once again these had been supplied by Chetti Singh and the trade was now worth over a quarter of a million US dollars a year. There were collectors in Europe and America who would pay huge sums for a pair of saddle-billed storks or bald ibis. The African parrots, although not as colourful as the South American varieties, were also much sought after. Chetti Singh could supply all these, and once again Cheng took his commission.
However, the main source of the snake-doctor’s income was still the supply of venomous snakes. The more venomous, the more valuable they were to Chinese gentlemen with faltering potency. The African mamba had been entirely unknown in Taiwan or mainland China until Chetti Singh had made the first shipment. Now they were the most prized of all snakes on the is
land, and commanded a price of two thousand US dollars apiece.
The snake-doctor had a particularly beautiful specimen ready in a mesh cage on his stainless-steel-topped table. Now he drew on a pair of elbow-length gloves, a precaution that he would have scorned had he been dealing with a cobra.
He opened the sliding lid of the cage a crack and slipped in a long steel forked rod. Deftly he pinned the mamba’s head and the snake hissed sharply and twined itself around the steel rod.
Now the snake-doctor opened the lid fully and seized the mamba behind the head, careful to get thumb and forefinger aligned behind the protuberances of the skull so the snake could not pull free of his grip.
The instant he released the pressure of the forked rod, the snake wrapped itself in tight coils around his forearm. it was six feet long and angry. it exerted all its rippling scaled strength to pull its head free, but the snake-doctor prevented the points of the skull from being drawn through his fingers.
The mamba’s jaws gaped wide open and its short fangs were erect in the pate soft mucous lining of its mouth. The clear venom oozed down the open channel in the fangs and dripped from the points like dew from a rose-thorn.
The snake-doctor held the reptile’s head on a small anvil and with a sharp blow of a wooden mallet crushed the skull. The snake’s body whipped around wildly in the death frenzy.
Cheng watched impassively as the snake-doctor hung the writhing body on a meat hook and then used a razor to slit open the belly cavity and drain the blood- into a cheap glass tumbler. With a surgeon’s skill he removed the venom sacs from the mamba’s neck and placed them in a glass bowl.
After that he lifted out the liver and gall bladder and placed them in a separate bowl.
Next he peeled off the snake’s skin, ringing the neck with the razor and stripping the skin like a nylon stocking from a girl’s leg. The naked body was pink and glistening. The snake doctor took it down from the meat hook and laid it on the steel tabletop.
With half a dozen blows of a cleaver he chopped it into pieces, and dropped them into a soup kettle that was already boiling on the burner of a gas stove at the rear of the shop. As he added herbs and spices to the kettle he intoned a magical incantation that had remained unchanged since the Han dynasty of 200 BC when the first snake-doctors had developed their art.
Once the soup was cooking, the snake-doctor turned back to his table.
He spilled the gall bladder and liver into a small mortar and pounded them to pulp with a ceramic pestle. Then he looked up at Cheng enquiringly. “Do you wish to take the tiger juice?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. Cheng always drank the venom.
Again it was part of the gambler’s thrill to flirt with death, for if he had a tiny gum boil or a scratch on his tongue, a bleeding rash in his throat or a raw spot in his guts, even a duodenal or gastric ulcer, the mamba venom would find it and kill him within minutes, and it would be an excruciating death.
The snake-doctor added the translucent sacs of venom to the mortar and pounded them in with the liver. Then he scraped the pulp into the glass tumbler of dark blood and while he stirred it he added a dash of medicine from each of three other bottles.
The concoction was black, and thick as honey. He handed the tumbler to Cheng.
Cheng drew a deep breath and then tossed back the liquid at a single gulp. It was bitter with gall. He placed the empty glass on the metal table-top, and folded his hands in his lap. He sat without showing any emotion, while the snake-doctor recited spells from his magic book over him. If the venom did not kill him, Cheng knew that the potion would arm his manhood. It would transform his flaccid penis into a steel lance. It would turn his testicles into cannonballs of iron.
He waited quietly for the first symptoms of poisoning. After ten minutes he felt no ill-effects, but his penis stirred and swelled into a semi-erection. He moved a little to give it space in his trousers and the snake-doctor smiled and nodded happily at the success of his treatment.
He went to fetch the soup kettle from the gas burner and poured some of the liquid into a rice bowl and then added a piece of mamba flesh, cooked white and flaking. He offered the bowl and a pair of ivory chopsticks to Cheng.
Cheng ate the meat and drank the soup and when he had finished he accepted a second bowl. At the end of the meal he belched loudly to show his appreciation, and again the snake doctor nodded and smiled.
Cheng consulted his wristwatch. It was nine o’clock. He rose to his feet and bowed. “Thank you for your assistance,” he said formally.
“I am honoured that my humble efforts have pleased you. I wish you a sword of steel and many happy hours in the velvet scabbard.”
There was no question of payment. The snake-doctor would make a deduction from Cheng’s commission on the supply of African snakes and wild birds.
Cheng walked back quickly to the apartment building in Tunhua Road. He sat in the black leather driving seat of the Porsche and for a few minutes enjoyed the tight full sensation of his erection before he started the engine and drove out of the garage.
It took him forty minutes to reach the sea pavilion. The grounds were surrounded by a high wall topped with a ridge of ceramic tiles, except on the open sea side. Coloured paper lanterns hung from the traditionally-shaped pediment of the gate. It looked like the entrance to a pleasure garden or fairground. Cheng knew that the lanterns had been lit especially to welcome him. The guards had been warned to expect him and they made no effort to detain him.
Cheng drove through and parked above the rocky headland. He locked the Porsche and stood for a moment inhaling the kelp odour of the sea. There was a fast motor launch moored at the private jetty. It would be needed later.
Cheng knew that in less than two hours the speed boat could be over the thousand yard sounding, over the oceanic depths of the East China Sea. A weighted object, such as a human body, dropped overboard from there would fall into the primeval ooze of the sea-bed, never to be recovered. He smiled. His erection had abated only slightly.
He went up to the pavilion It was also of traditional architecture. It reminded Cheng of the house in the willow-tree pattern on the blue porcelain plates. A servant met him at the door, led him into an inner room and brought him tea.
It was exactly ten o’clock when she entered the room from behind the bead curtain.
She was slim as a boy in her tight brocaded tunic and silk pantaloons. He had never been able to guess her age for she wore a mask of make-up like a player in a Peking opera. Her almond eyes were starkly outlined in jet black, while her lids and cheeks were hectically rouged to the carmine colour that the Chinese find so attractive. Her forehead and the bridge of her nose were ash white and her lips a deep startling scarlet.
“Welcome to my house, Green Mountain Man,” she lisped, and Cheng bowed.
“I am honoured, Myrtle Blossom Lady.”
She sat on the sofa beside Cheng and they exchanged formal and polite conversation, until Cheng indicated the cheap imitation leather briefcase he had placed on the table in front of him.
She appeared to notice it for the first time, but did not deign to touch it herself. She inclined her head and her assistant glided into the room on slippered feet. She must have been watching them from behind the beaded curtain. She left again as silently as she had entered, taking the briefcase with her.
It took her a few minutes to count the money in the back room and to put it in a safe place. Then she returned and knelt beside her mistress. They exchanged a glance. The money was all there.
“You say that there is a choice of two?” Cheng asked.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But would you like to make sure the room is to your taste, and that the equipment is in order?” She led Cheng through to the special room at the back of the pavilion.
The central piece of furniture was a gynaecologist’s couch, complete with stirrups. It was fitted with a plastic cover that could be removed and destroyed after use, and there was also a plastic sheet laid over th
e floor. The walls and ceiling were tiled and washable.
Like an operating theatre, it could be scrubbed down to its present sterile condition.
Cheng moved to the table on which the instruments were laid out. There was a selection of silk cords of various lengths and thicknesses arranged in neat coils on the tray. He picked up one of these and ran it through his fingers. His erection, which had softened, revived strongly.
Then he turned his attention to the other items on the table, a full set of stainless steel gynaccological instruments.
“Very good,” he told her.
“Come,” she said, and took his hand. “You may choose now.”
She led him to a small window in the near wall. They stood hand-in-hand in front of it and looked through the one-way glass into the room beyond. After a few moments the female assistant led two children into the room.
They were both dressed in white. In the Chinese tradition, white was the colour of death. Both the little girls had long dark hair and pretty little nut-brown pug faces. Cambodian or Vietnamese, Cheng guessed.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Boat people,” she said. “Their boat was captured by pirates in the South China Sea. All the adults were killed. They are orphans, nameless and stateless. Nobody knows they exist; nobody will miss them.” The female assistant began to undress the two little girls. She did it skilfully, titillating the hidden audience like a strip-tease artiste.
One girl was at least fourteen. Once she was naked Cheng saw that she had full breasts and a dark tussock of pubic hair, but the other girl was barely pubescent. Her breasts were flower buds, and the fine haze of pubic down did not conceal the plump cleft of her pudenda.
“The young one!” Cheng whispered hoarsely. “I want the young one.”
“Yes,” she said. “I thought that would be your choice. She will be brought to you in a few minutes. You may take as long as you wish. There is no hurry.”